She stood naked except for her pearls, and in that moment, she saved thousands of lives.

The guard stammered an apology and fled. He never suspected a thing. Amy Elizabeth Thorpe was born in 1910 to a life of privilege—daughter of a Marine Corps colonel and a senator’s granddaughter. But by age 14, she’d already learned that beauty could be power. By 19, she was pregnant, the father unknown among several diplomatic lovers. To escape scandal, she married Arthur Pack, a British diplomat 19 years older. It wasn’t love. It was survival. For years, she followed him across the world—Chile, Spain, Poland—brilliant, bored, and burning for purpose. Then British intelligence noticed her affair with a Polish official who had access to German secrets. They asked her to formalize what she was already doing. To weaponize what society called weakness. She said yes without hesitation. Her codename: Cynthia. When World War II erupted, Cynthia became one of the most effective intelligence operatives in history. Her method was devastatingly simple—seduce men with access to secrets, extract intelligence through intimacy and manipulation. She obtained Italian naval cipher books from a former friend.

She gathered critical intelligence on the Enigma machine. But in 1942, Allied command needed something that could alter the entire war: the Vichy French naval codes, locked inside a safe in their Washington embassy. Her target was Charles Brousse—49 years old, decorated war hero, passionate anti-Nazi. She posed as a sympathetic American journalist. Within weeks, they were lovers. For months, she extracted intelligence through pillow talk. Then she told him the truth. Everything. She was a spy. She needed his help breaking into that safe. He should have turned her in. Instead, he fell deeper in love. Charles arranged for them to use the embassy after hours for “romantic encounters.” For weeks, they established the pattern. Guards grew accustomed to seeing them arrive together, disappear into a room, emerge hours later. Then came the real operation: break into the safe, photograph the cipher books, return everything before dawn. They hired a professional safecracker. The first attempt failed—not enough time. The second attempt failed—wrong combination. The third attempt would be their last chance. That night, everything was proceeding perfectly. The safe was open. The safecracker was photographing the documents.

Then Cynthia heard footsteps in the corridor. The night watchman—making his rounds early. In a split second, she made her choice. She stripped off every piece of clothing except her pearl necklace. She pulled Charles close, her hands frantically working at his shirt. The door opened. The watchman froze. There stood Cynthia—completely naked, locked in what appeared to be a passionate embrace. She didn’t try to hide. She made eye contact, letting him see everything, her modesty deliberately careless. She wanted him to look. The mortified guard stammered an apology and fled the scene. Behind a closed door, the safecracker continued his work. The cipher books were photographed. Everything was returned to the safe. Everything was locked away. No one ever knew. In November 1942, Allied forces launched Operation Torch—the invasion of French North Africa. The stolen Vichy codes allowed them to intercept French naval communications, anticipate every move, coordinate landings with devastating precision.

Operation Torch succeeded. North Africa fell. The tide of the war began to turn. Sir William Stephenson, head of British intelligence operations, later called her “the greatest unsung heroine of the war.” After the war ended, Arthur Pack took his own life in 1945. Charles Brousse divorced his wife and married Cynthia. They retired to his medieval château in the French Pyrenees, where she lived quietly until her death from throat cancer in 1963. Before she died, someone asked if she felt ashamed. Her response: “Not in the least. My superiors told me that the results of my work saved thousands of British and American lives. It involved me in situations from which ‘respectable’ women draw back—but mine was total commitment. Wars are not won by respectable methods.” History celebrates James Bond—the fictional spy who seduced women for secrets. Cynthia did it first. She did it for real. She weaponized the very thing society said made women weak. And she helped win a war.